Dave’s Football Blog

And now for something completely different…

If you’re a first-time visitor to our lonely little planet from somewhere else in the galaxy, here’s something you should know.

No matter where on Earth you may travel, chances are you’ll find people who are absolutely crazy about football — just not always the same kind of football. There’s one game called football in America. There’s a slightly different game called football in Canada. The British have two different forms of football, both of which are played in many parts of the world. If you travel to Australia or Ireland, you’ll see completely different forms of football in both those countries, too.

Yet just about everywhere, the most popular sport is called “football.” How did that happen? And why are we all so protective of our own native football games?

When I launched Dave’s Football Blog in 2004, it was focused almost entirely on the National Football League, with occasional jaunts into other forms of professional American football. That all changes today. From here on out, this blog will attempt to examine the origins and the evolution of football — all kinds of football. How did all these different games called football come to be? Why are we all so obsessed with them? And where might football go as we progress through in the 21st century?

Now you’re probably asking yourself, “Damn, Dave, what brought this on?”

It was a couple of things, actually. For starters, last summer during the 2006 World Cup, I looked up the word “football” in Wikipedia, and I discovered there was a lot more to the history of these sports we all call football than 40 Super Bowls and a handful of soccer games. It’s a topic that not enough people explore, and I wanted to use this blog for that exploration.

Why this blog? Well, quite honestly, things have changed around this here series of tubes. When I started this blog in 2004, I felt like I was doing something unique and interesting. Now you’ve got the likes of Deadspin, NFL FanHouse and Kissing Suzy Kolber out there, along with hundreds of other football blogs and fan sites. Being just another NFL blogger isn’t as unique and interesting as it used to be. Besides, I’m an NFL FanHouse contributor myself. It’s one thing to compete with others, but competing with myself last season was a royal pain in the arse.

So it’s time for a new adventure. We’re going to explore this thing called football in ways that most people don’t, because despite what certain school board members in Kansas might tell you, football didn’t just drop out of the sky in its current form. No, my friends, football evolves, and no one football game is any more “real football” than any other. These are all just man-made games with man-made rules, and how we all decided on those rules is a story that never gets told, but should be.

I’m sure I’ll get parts of this story wrong along the way, too, so feel free to post a comment if you see anything that looks incorrect or incomplete, or if you just want to add to the conversation. Reader participation always makes a blog more interesting, and besides, nobody really learns in an echo chamber, do they?

So climb aboard, and let’s take off on a brand new ozone expedition. You never know what we might find along the way…